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Trump's big meeting with Kim Jong Un is already being blasted as a 'huge photo op' — and worse

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un gives field guidance at the Pyongyang Pharmaceutical Factory, in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang January 25, 2018.

source

KCNA / via REUTERS

President Donald Trump has accepted an invitation from
North Korea to meet with Kim Jong Un.

Trump wants Kim to denuclearize his country.

Experts think the meeting could be a "huge photo op" -
and may make the situation worse.

It looks like President Donald Trump
may soon be face-to-face with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un
- and some experts are already blasting the meeting before it
happens.

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"The US has been getting played and outmaneuvered the past
three months...and it's happening again, right now," Van Jackson,
a defense expert and lecturer at the Victoria University of
Wellington, wrote on
Twitter.

"Anyone who thinks a Trump-Kim meeting would resolve, or
even help, the nuclear issue is forgetting history."

Michael Hayden, the former director of the CIA and the NSA,
was
more blunt - "I got a bad feeling here."

South Korea's national security adviser, Chung Eui-Yong,
made the announcement in front of the White House Thursday
night. Trump has agreed to meet with Kim by May of this year,
although no exact date or location have been confirmed.

North Korea expert Jeffrey Lewis noted
that the meeting would be somewhat of a coup for Kim, as his
country "has been seeking a summit with an American president for
more than twenty years."

"Kim is not inviting Trump so that he can surrender North
Korea's weapons," Lewis writes.
"Kim is inviting Trump to demonstrate that his investment in
nuclear and missile capabilities has forced the United States to
treat him as an equal."

Ankit Panda, a senior editor at The Diplomat, agreed with Lewis'
assessment. A meeting, he writes,
could give Kim legitimacy by showing that he "has the
thermonuclear, Washington-busting ICBM ... and now a US president
has come to meet him to talk about nukes."

"Two nuclear states chatting it out."

source

Win McNamee/Getty Images

Tom Nichols, a professor at the Naval War College, went off
on the proposed meeting on
Twitter, calling it a "huge photo op" and a "propaganda
bonanza" for North Korea. The potential months before the meeting
gives North Korea time to work on its ICBMs, Nichols writes, and
if it becomes an acknowledged nuclear power "Kim looks like a
global badass."

Lawmakers also cautioned that North Korea could be using
the proposed meeting as a delay tactic.

"Remember, North Korean regimes have repeatedly used talks
and empty promises to extract concessions and buy time,"
Republican Congressman Ed Royce, who chairs the House Foreign
Affairs Committee, said in a
statement. "North Korea uses this to advance its nuclear and
missile programs."

The situation could also end up more tense if talks fall
through.

"Trump summit with Kim a two edged sword. Real chance of a
breakthrough," Eurasia Group president Ian
Bremmer tweeted. "But staking success of presidency on one of
the world's most intractable conflicts will make Trump feel more
compelled to strike if Kim doesn't deliver."